18 Imperfect information information sets and sub-game分析和总结分析和总结.docxVIP

Game Theory: Lecture 18 Transcript Overview: We consider games that have both simultaneous and sequential components, combining ideas from before and after the midterm. We represent what a player does not know within a game using an information set: a collection of nodes among which the player cannot distinguish. This lets us define games of imperfect information; and also lets us formally define subgames. We then extend our definition of a strategy to imperfect information games, and use this to construct the normal form (the payoff matrix) of such games. A key idea here is that it is information, not time per se, that matters. We show that not all Nash equilibria of such games are equally plausible: some are inconsistent with backward induction; some involve non-Nash behavior in some (unreached) subgames. To deal with this, we introduce a more refined equilibrium notion, called sub-game perfection. November 7, 2007 back Professor Ben Polak: So today we have a lot of stuff to get through, but its all going to be fairly formal. Were not going to have time to play a game today. So its going to be a day where we have to learn some new ideas. So the reason we need to go through some new formal ideas today is weve kind of exhausted what we can do with the ideas weve gathered so far. So, just to bring us up to date with where we are: in the first half of the semester--so before the mid-term--we looked at simultaneous move games. And one way to think about those simultaneous move games were games where, when I make my choice, I dont know what youve done, and, when you make your choice, you dont know what Ive done. Since the mid-term weve been looking at simple examples of sequential move games--sequential move games under perfect information--in which I typically do know what you did when I get to make my choice. And you know Im going to know what you did when I get to make my choice. What I want to be able to domoving forward is I want to be ableto look at strategic situ